Most of the time, when the folks at MTV claim to portray “real” teenagers in their “natural” environs, they’re simultaneously pulling their puppetmaster strings behind the scenes, negotiating overblown opportunities for their subjects that are anything but realistic. This allows the network to have it all: “reality,” in all its faux authentic trappings, plus, for MTV’s own sake, an affected, larger-than-life payoff that seems even more urgent scored to a grandiose emo soundtrack. But with its latest docudrama series, The Paper (MTV, Mondays at 10:30 pm), the cable behemoth has taken something of a risk. The show allows the young Florida journalists on Cypress Bay High’s the Circuit to expose to the world the business of running a student newspaper, thereby chronicling a year’s worth of literary achievements and disappointments. And that’s it. Nobody gets voted off Editorial Island (“Please pack your tape recorder and your red pen and leave immediately!”), or has his or her pitches trashed by an scary-serious panel of media experts (“Your ideas reek of banality”). None of the movers-and-shakers on the Circuit’s masthead wins a cushy fellowship for correctly quoting Marshall McLuhan. No one even gets a free New Yorker subscription.

The staff doesn’t require a fancy reward system in order to behave in a cutthroat, competitive, borderline-unhinged manner — because, as it turns out, high-school journalists are just like real ones! The first two episodes of The Paper focus on the ladder climbing and the insider gossip that swirls around an all-important question: who will be the next editor-in-chief? A bunch of people want it, but few of them reveal the desire — no, the need — for the position that current copy editor Amanda does. While the rest of the editors are partying and procrastinating, Amanda is hard at work on her application till 2 am, brainstorming ideas and doling out pithy soundbites about the state of contemporary journalism to her dog. Her meticulousness goes beyond punctuation and grammar: she pre-selects her outfits a week in advance and analyzes the meaning behind each one. (“This says I’m approachable, because I wear T-shirts, just like everyone else.”) The New York Observer’s Matt Haber likened her personality to that of Election’s Tracy Flick, and the comparison couldn’t be more apt.

Amanda has a flair for Broadway sass, though she tries hard to play down her naked ambition and project herself as an egalitarian leader. But her colleagues have agendas of their own. Their unbelievably nasty treatment of her, though likely prompted by the MTV’s producers/overlords, is painful to watch. The night before the newspaper-class adviser, Mrs. Weiss, announces the decision that makes Amanda into the Circuit’s newest chief, one editor darkly threatens to try to “impeach her” if she gets the job. Even her new managing editor, Alex, who seemed like a lovable dork at first, morphs into a backstabbing liar dying to undercut her and win over the incoming freshmen! What would Bill Keller say to that?

Still, for all of their deliciously dramatized newsroom politics, the kids on The Paper are no fools — they’re prenaturally pissed-off and cynical about everything from how grayscale looks on a proof to the semi-permanence of their own editorial control. “Basically, the state of the paper is that we’re screwed,” says a wry Alex, sounding for a moment less like an adolescent hack than someone who may well be defining the future of the industry.

Game on Dodgers win the Series! Bird plays H.O.R.S.E.! Congressman Canseco! We have seen the future of sports (and its name is Tony Graffanino).

Lapdog, meet watchdog Hating the media has long been a popular pastime. But after the invasion of Iraq four years ago, anti-press animus reached a new level of intensity on the left. Feast or famine: Jack Shafer defends the press pre-Iraq. By Adam Reilly

Is this thing on? In the modern age, America’s major-party conventions are love fests, feting their preselected nominees. But that may not be the case this year for Barack Obama.

Fourth-estate follies, 2009 edition Between the rise of the Web, the ADD-addling of America, the fragmentation of any national political consensus, and the devastated economy, working in the press can feel a bit like manning the Titanic — and this year, the entire industry seemed to teeter on the edge of oblivion.

Difficult people As a reader of fiction, at this point in life I’m sort of in my late Imperial phase — a sensationalist, easily distracted, with a vulgar appetite for brilliance.

Salvation by faith Miracles are subjective, and it’s in this tenuous currency that strident young Joan d’Arc traffics, as she wins and finally loses her countrymen’s hearts and minds.

See no evil An intriguing battle pitting government against the press is currently percolating on the North Shore and here in Boston.

The Gray Lady in shadow Fearful that his presidency could be swept into the same historical dustbin as Richard Nixon’s, an unrepentant President George W. Bush seems intent on prosecuting the sources who leaked to the New York Times the details of his administration’s warrantless domestic spying.

Mr. Respectable Last Wednesday, oft-vilified media mogul Rupert Murdoch announced that News Corp. — parent company of (among others) the Times of London, the New York Post , and Fox News — will soon begin charging readers for access to all its news sites.

YO, JONNY! THE LOVE SONG OF JONNY VALENTINE | February 05, 2013 Sometime after becoming a YouTube megastar and crashing into the cult of personality that has metastasized in contemporary society, Teddy Wayne's 11-year-old bubblegum idol Jonny Valentine is hanging out in his dressing room getting a blow job from a girl who doesn't even like his music.

LENA DUNHAM AND HBO GET IT RIGHT | April 13, 2012 When a new television show chronicling the lives of young women arrives, it tends to come packaged with the promise that it will expertly define them, both as a generation and a gender.

EUGENIDES'S UPDATED AUSTEN | October 12, 2011 For his long-awaited third novel, Jeffrey Eugenides goes back to look at love in the '80s — and apparently decides that it's a lot like love in the early 19th century.

REVIEW: RINGER | September 08, 2011 Sixty seconds into the CW's new psychological thriller Ringer, star Sarah Michelle Gellar is seen running from a masked attacker in the darkness.

LOVE'S LEXICOGRAPHER | February 10, 2011 As the editorial director at Scholastic, David Levithan is surrounded by emotional stories about adolescents. Being overexposed to such hyperbolic feelings about feelings could easily turn a writer off pursuing such ventures himself — despite the secrets he may have picked up along the way.